o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

DESPINA VLAMI
tect the involvement of some of them –Elenitsa Margariti Papanikolaou, for instance– in
a credit economy in which everything was measured in monetary prices and trust. In
doing so they participated in informal networks of communication, both material and
conceptual, that transcended gender barriers.
The case of Haido Vassiliou
Vassiliou’s most frequent correspondent during the period studied was his sister
Haido. The two of them exchanged letters between 1821 and 1824. In the Copia Lettere
found in his personal archive Vassiliou appears to have addressed 32 letters to
Haido (16 in 1822, 4 in 1823 and 12 in 1824) while she addressed 18 to him (3 in
1821, 4 in 1822, 5 in 1823 and 6 in 1824) 12 . Their correspondence reveals in the
most evocative and explicit way the individual case of a woman involved in the
phenomenon of the nineteenth-century Greek diaspora. In order to provide for an
extended family of female relatives –nieces, sisters-in-law and cousins– whose husbands,
brothers and fathers were engaged in business abroad, Haido Vassiliou participated
in a series of financial transactions with commercial operators, merchants,
commissioners and various other intermediaries linked in credit chains 13 . It appears
that she also took it upon herself to make all necessary arrangements to guarantee
the payment of the annuities bequeathed to her by her late husband. Her ability to
combine an unrelenting desire to provide for the more fragile members of her family
with a keen interest in financial and monetary issues, financial enterprises with
domesticity, and family affairs with a constant awareness of moral and emotional
support for the expatriated members of the family, rendered her a key personality
within her family, community and business environment. Her case, as it is revealed
in her correspondence, is briefly presented in what follows; however, a more indepth
account will be added to a general overview of Vassiliou’s correspondence
with female addressees.
Between 1821 and 1824 Haido Vassiliou lived in Metsovo, travelling frequently
to Ioannina, Epirus 14 . She was the widow of the merchant Ioannis Christodoulou
12 See Table I.
13 The term ‘chain’ is utilized in the text purposefully to avoid inaccurate use of the term
‘network’ and an immersion in the vast theory of network analysis. Networks have been utilized
extensively and productively by Greek historians to describe and interpret the phenomenon
of the Greek merchant diaspora (see also note n. 2). It seems however that for a useful
application of this methodological tool, free from any connotations, we need first its working
definition: an in-depth empirical analysis of all primary material available that would demonstrate
the exact sort and spectrum of human relations investigated before these are combined
analytically to the form, organization and function of any kind of ‘network’.
14 For an early and very interesting study of the organization of family in Syrrako, Hepiros,
see Caftantzoglou, R. & M. Naoumi, ‘Μορφές οικογένειας στο Συρράκο στις αρχές του
αιώνα’, Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, 1985 (58), pp. 32-54. For an in-depth account of
kin relations and family organization in Greece during the Ottoman Occupation see Sp. I. Asdrachas,
‘Η δομή του πληθυσμού» in Sp. I. Asdrachas & N. E. Karapidakis, Olga Katsiardi-
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